On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to state education departments requesting every school district in the country sign a certification that they are not using diversity, equity and inclusion programs that are deemed discriminatory by the federal government, or they could face the federal government cutting their funds.

USDOE asked state education departments to sign a “reminder of legal obligations” within 10 days to confirm that they are not giving unfair advantages to people based on race, and to gather signatures from school districts.

The particular funds at state are Title I grants — which are grants for low-income students.

Local school superintendents said the U.S. Education Department’s letter is unclear, vague and leaves the scope and specifics of “impermissible” DEI programs undefined.

New York’s Education Department has responded with a letter to USDOE, saying the federal government’s request is redundant and lacking authority.

The legal ground cited for the USDOE order is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, as well as a 2023 Supreme Court ruling involving Harvard University which overturned affirmative action admissions practices in colleges.

Trump’s administration considers certain DEI practices to violate the Civil Rights Act.

“Many schools have advanced discriminatory policies and practices under the banner of ‘DEI’ initiatives,” USDOE alleges, saying white and Asian American students are sometimes discriminated against in education.

NYSED said USDOE does not have the legal authority to make such a demand, that its basis for this directive was “conflating policy with law” and that New York school districts already follow the Civil Rights Act.

“Given the fact that you are already in possession of guarantees by NYSED that it has and will comply with Title VI, no further certification will be forthcoming,” NYSED Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley wrote. “We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘(DEI.)’ But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of DEI.”

On Friday, Lake Placid Central School District Superintendent Tim Seymour said his district’s legal counsel received a message from the state saying the districts will not be required to respond individually to the federal government’s demands, but that it would be a question to be resolved between the state and the federal government.

The districts have not received the letter themselves. The letters went to state education chiefs, who are asked to then collect the signatures from every school district. Ultimately, if districts were to respond, it would be up to the boards of education whether to sign it or not.

The state is advising against signing it, saying the federal government has yet to define what practices would be considered violations, and that the directive is based on USDOE’s interpretation of the law, which is not the same as a law.

“NYSED is unaware of any authority that USDOE has to demand that a state education agency agree to its interpretation of a judicial decision or change the terms and conditions of NYSED’s award without formal administrative process,” Morton-Bentley wrote.

Saranac Lake Central School District Superintendent Diane Fox was not surprised by this announcement. She’s been prepared for it. When she presented the tentative school budget last month, she noted the district was preparing for this exact situation.

While Trump’s administration is working to dismantle the DOE and federal officials say the department’s grant funds will still be available, Fox had anticipated that they may be smaller or come with “strings attached.”

These are the strings.

SLCSD’s tentative budget already shifted the positions funded by these federal grants into the general budget in anticipation of something going awry, absorbing around $400,000 to keep special education, counseling and academic intervention staff next year without having to rely on these grants to fund those positions.

Fox said, as the budget approaches a vote on Wednesday, things are “murky as best” again with the new directive.

“The federal requirement is not exact in what they are looking for when they talk about DEI programs,” Fox said. “They have not clearly spelled out what is on the OK list and what is not on the OK list.”

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Define DEI

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What counts as DEI? It’s unclear.

With the scope of potential “impermissible” DEI practices unknown, school leaders don’t want to agree to something without knowing what it is.

“I don’t have an opinion when you ask whether or not I’ll sign the letter because I haven’t really seen what the letter is asking me to sign,” Fox said.

The directive’s cited DEI targets are mostly things don’t seem to apply to public K-12 schools — scholarships, financial aid, administrative support, housing and graduation ceremonies. It was unclear as of press time Friday night whether this directive applies to North Country Community College, a New York state college in Saranac Lake.

One big question is if this applies to curriculum.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon previously said in her Senate confirmation hearing that she wasn’t sure if a Black history class might violate the DEI policy and that she’d have to “fully understand the breadth of the executive order” to answer that. Later, the department said not all race-focused classes would violate their new guidelines, but some would. The department also said things like Black History Month celebrations or programs focused on specific cultures would be OK, “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination.”

“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” USDOE acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal antidiscrimination requirements. Unfortunately, we have seen too many schools flout or outright violate these obligations, including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics.”

Roger Catania, the region’s local Board of Regents representative, said the SCOTUS case cited in the order was about college admissions and the USDOE was trying to use it expansively to say that any representation of student background is discriminatory. He said this is “misinterpreting” the decision and then going way beyond it.

“What the state Education Department said adheres to the law, and what the federal government said does not. That’s the bottom line,” Catania said. “They’re making use of the culture war language to try to put public school districts on their heels.”

There’s several situations that could happen here. The state could ask districts not to sign it, the boards could not agree to sign it, the boards could sign it and then be found in violation of it. Fox said the district has state DEI requirements it must meet.

Catania said this puts districts in a bind between the law and the federal government asking them to go beyond the law by threatening funding, and that district officials feel nervous, especially since they are all currently crafting their budgets.

“I’ve made school budgets before,” Catania, the former LPCSD superintendent, said. “We don’t like uncertainty.”

He said the Title I federal funding is established by law and approved by Congress. If districts do lose funding, he’s sure it would be challenged in court and he believes the districts would win, but no one wants to have to go through that.

Morton-Bentley said this directive marks “an abrupt shift from USDOE’s position on DEI during the first Trump administration,” when then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said diversity and inclusion are “cornerstones” and “key elements for success.”

The Education Department last month introduced an “End DEI” portal where people can report discriminatory practices based on race or sex at public schools to get the department to investigate and potentially cut funding.

Seymour stands by his district’s current policies, saying they have always abided by Title VI.

“We have and continue to be nondiscriminatory in our policies and practices,” he said. “Our focus remains on providing the very best education for our students.”

LPCSD receives about $150,000 per year for Title I funding. It goes towards things like reading support and materials that help support low-income students. The district has a budget of about $23.1 million, the vast majority of which is funded by the local tax levy, so the district would be in a position to recoup any theoretical losses from federal funding, Seymour said.

Fox said none of the DEI work at SLCSD meets the label of being “discriminatory.” “Absolutely not,” she said. At SLCSD, she said DEI means everybody feels like they belong and are put on equal footing. She said it’s not about putting one group over another, but inviting everyone in.

When it comes to hiring practices, and Fox said SLCSD has a “big table” for anyone to sit at. When it comes to curriculum, Fox said she is holding the line and told teachers to keep teaching what they are free to do.

SLCSD, like many districts in New York, has a DEI committee. SLCSD’s committee was actually created before the state recommended every district have one, after its 2020 valedictorian Francine “Frannie” Newman used her valedictory address to talk about racism she endured during school as an Asian student. The committee has met monthly since then.

Fox said when they started, nobody was doing anything specifically DEI-related. In the years since, they’ve hired staff, drafted policies and increased DEI work to make sure all students fell welcome and accepted at school.